Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Highsec "carebears", rise against the Goons!

PvP-ers - as their name tell - prefer PvP in EVE and that doesn't earn money. So they have trouble financing their PvP, this is why every large nullsec empire - including CFC - is paying most of the costs of PvP-ers. Alliance logistics erect towers, jump bridges, capture or build stations, place bridging titans and pay ship replacement programs. The PvP-er just dock, fit and fly. In most empires you can fly in fleets for completely free.

Who pays for this money: in nullsec, mostly top-down income sources, like moon mining, POCOs or renting. Because of this, nullsec empires don't value PvE or industrial-focused players among their ranks. Goons were the first who gained serious income from member PvE. They rat day and night in Deklein, paying 15% tax to their corps. But this doesn't make Goons a "carebear haven" in New Eden. Quite the opposite: they allow only Goonwaffe members to rat as they please, everyone else in GSF and the CFC alliances has to conform PvP standards, leaving little time to rat.

Also, to cover up their PvE nature, Goons are extremely obnoxious towards other PvE players. While other alliances just ignore and dismiss PvE as playstyle, Goons go great length to hurt such players for little personal gain. Hulkageddon and Burn Jita are infamous pogroms against highsec PvE players. Also, they call these players "pubbie shitlords" and various foul names, they even called their own renter alliance "PBLRD" (read: publord), referring to their statement that everyone who does PvE (outside of Goonwaffe of course) is a sub-human. How can you get to Goonwaffe, the only place where you can rat without abuse? You can't. If you try, you get scammed.

This is why the GRR project was born. To prove the value of ISK in wars by fighting those who deny it the most loudly. I use my money to enable highsec PvP-ers hitting Goons and their pets and it works perfectly. From my 18B in February spawned 222B damage to the enemy. How? By paying the wardec and management costs of a new alliance Darwins Lemmings and the wardec costs of the highsec PvP alliance Marmite Collective. These people want to PvP, they want to hit Goons and pets (as they are numerous and dumb), but they can't afford the costs, at least not constantly. They are PvP-ers, they don't like running missions or do industry. They rather just accept less targets.

Why do I do it? Because I realized why the Goons picked "highsec pubbies" as their punching bag: because we don't hit back. We have the power, our ISK, but we sit on it, spend it on luxury items (officer items) or just stockpile it. We don't use it for anything meaningful, anything that shapes New Eden. So I stopped stockpiling it and used it to hit back to Goons. And it works with stunning results: for every ISK I pay, Goons and pets suffer 12 ISK damage.

I'm not the only one with money. If you are frequent on this blog, you probably have money too. Why don't you use it for something that will reshape New Eden? Goons are close to complete the blue doughnut, the total domination of nullsec. Instead of that victory, let's give them a crushing defeat! All this needs is highsec "carebears" like you to stop watching your wallet number grow, or the purple items on a ship you don't even dare to undock and use it on the war against Goons.

How could you do that? Just like me: find PvP-ers and enable their war against Goons and pets. Read more about it here. If you don't have better ideas, send it to Titania Goblin, my alt in the Darwins Lemmings alliance. Every ISK received (over 10M) will be listed on a "donators" section of the blog and fully spent on the GRR project. How? By paying more wars, by paying more PvP groups, by paying FCs, logistics, and finally by ship replacement programs.

What would your ISK change? The whole EVE. If the GRR project and similar, ISK-enabled projects continue to grow and the 222B damage grows into several trillions, then everyone would see how much power lies in the wallets of industrial players. The "purge the useless carebears" belief will be replaced by "how to lure these enablers to our ranks". From pariahs of EVE you can grow to the most valued member.

Send the proceedings of your industry, trading or PvE to a PvP group of your trust (or in absence of these, to Titania Goblin) and you'll see New Eden turn upside down and the obnoxious abusive language of Goons turn into crying and begging!

PS: if you happen to be not a highsec industrialist, but a nullsec CEO who was wronged by Goons and unable to retaliate (khm treaties khm), just send me ISK from a 1-day old pilot and your revenge will be delivered!

PS2: the comedy kills of today weren't made by our members, but they are so good that I couldn't resist placing them here. They can be called "the revenge of the Bomblessbomber on the Goons".

45 comments:

Arrendis
said...

Wow. Where to begin...

I'm gonna need a few posts to get through it all, I fear. So, let's get started, shall we?

But this doesn't make Goons a "carebear haven" in New Eden. Quite the opposite: they allow only Goonwaffe members to rat as they please, everyone else in GSF and the CFC alliances has to conform PvP standards, leaving little time to rat.

Sorry, Gevlon, gotta call bullshit on this one yet again

In TNT, I rat, and I do industry. when I was in FA last year, same. Before that in LAWN, jeez, there were days we couldn't get a home defense fleet in Branch, despite having hundreds of people on, because LAWN and SMA both were too busy PvEing.

(Here's a subtle hint you might be wrong about nobody but GSF valuing industry-focused people: the guys who run LAWN belong to a corp named Blueprint Haus. Spoiler Alert: There's a non-zero chance that they're industrialists.)

Also, to cover up their PvE nature, Goons are extremely obnoxious towards other PvE players. While other alliances just ignore and dismiss PvE as playstyle, Goons go great length to hurt such players for little personal gain. Hulkageddon and Burn Jita are infamous pogroms against highsec PvE players.

Again, I have to call bullshit. Goons aren't obnoxious toward PvE players, Goons are obnoxious toward everyone - at least, the obnoxious ones are. Plenty of Goons are wonderful folks (in fact, I'd say most of them are). Why do they go after high-sec PvE-ers during Hulkageddon and Burn Jita? Because it's funny.

Now, you might ask yourself 'what kind of sick sociopath laughs at the pain of others?' You might. The answer would be 'everyone'.

Lemme give you some time-honored examples of 'pain is funny' - America's Funniest Home Videos, The Three Stooges, the entire genre of Slapstick Comedy, and of course, let us never forget the immortal words of Mel Brooks: "Comedy is 'a man walks down the street, falls in a manhole cover and breaks his neck.' Tragedy is 'I get a hangnail'."

If you think the Goons are the kind of people who enjoy seeing other human beings actually suffering, then you're even more off-base than you normally are. No, these are not people who enjoy seeing other human beings enduring actual suffering. They're also not people who consider 'you blew up my space pixels' to be actual suffering. Because it's not.

Eve Online is a game - it's a game where PVP is baked into the PVE: literally everything you do, with the exception of mission-running, is PvP. Industry? The Market? If you weren't filling that need, someone else would be. You are literally competing with other people for every sale, vying with them for each isk you make. And that includes when the mission-runner goes to buy himself more ammo - after all, he could be doing it via buy-order to try to get more for his money. Just because he's not attempting to be successful in PVP doesn't mean he's not engaging in it.

In fact, when he buys his ammo off the lowest sell order, that's X amount of that ammo nobody else can buy at that lowest price. Rationalize it all you like, but the amount of anything in New Eden at any given moment is finite, it's only the potential amount over an infinite amount of time that isn't. And if it's finite, then we're competing over it, even if we never realize it.

Also, they call these players "pubbie shitlords" and various foul names, they even called their own renter alliance "PBLRD" (read: publord), referring to their statement that everyone who does PvE (outside of Goonwaffe of course) is a sub-human. How can you get to Goonwaffe, the only place where you can rat without abuse? You can't. If you try, you get scammed.

No. First off, nobody playing this game has ever been called 'sub-human' by Goons or the CFC. That's the hallmark of our enemies in the east, thanks. 'Pubbie', sure. 'Shitlord', sure. But as I've told you quite directly, not all shitlords are pubbies, and not all pubbies are shitlords. You can be stupid, you can be an asshole, and you can even be a stupid asshole, but the fact that some people are stupid assholes does not mean that all assholes are stupid, or that everyone who's stupid is an asshole.

And again, no, 'Pubbie' has nothing to do with PvE. PL is pubbies. TNT, LAWN, SMA, GENTS, FCON, we're all 'pubbies' because we are not members of Something Awful w/an active posting history. Congratulations on deciding to push an empty strawman that holds up about as well as saying 'The US hates everyone who lives in Australia because they call them 'Aussies'.'

This is why the GRR project was born. To prove the value of ISK in wars by fighting those who deny it the most loudly.

Then you should find someone who denies the value of ISK in a war. Seriously, maybe go talk to TEST 12 months ago. Because the CFC blatantly won on the power of 'we had enough money to keep flying good ships'. Hell, we invaded Fountain on the premise of 'ISK fucking matters, and we don't intend to be poor now that Technetium has been nerfed.'

And for the record, that was another big reason for Hulkageddon in years past: Replacing a Hulk required Technetium, and that helped keep the ISK flowing. So if you want to fight those who deny the value of ISK during wartime... seriously, go attack the Alliance you propped up last year.

I use my money to enable highsec PvP-ers hitting Goons and their pets and it works perfectly. From my 18B in February spawned 222B damage to the enemy. How? By paying the wardec and management costs of a new alliance Darwins Lemmings and the wardec costs of the highsec PvP alliance Marmite Collective.

It might be helpful if you'd stop moving the goalposts. You've stated your goals time and time again as 'take their POCOs' or 'make them admit the value of PvE' or 'Destroy RvB' or 'Make Goons change their culture completely' or even just 'blow up more in ISK than I paid them' - which is it? What are your benchmarks? Let's see something demonstrable.

These people want to PvP, they want to hit Goons and pets (as they are numerous and dumb), but they can't afford the costs, at least not constantly. They are PvP-ers, they don't like running missions or do industry. They rather just accept less targets.

Then maybe they should stop running away. I mean, if they want to PvP, then maybe they should actually PvP instead of doing exactly the 'shooting shit that's set up for PvE' that you decry and villify. You can't have it both ways, Gevlon: Either Marmite and Lemmings are engaging in precisely the behavior you find excoriable when they do things like blowing up a ratting-fitted Megathron, or Goons are not, in fact, unmitigated evil when they announce another Hulkageddon or Burn Jita.

Why do I do it? Because I realized why the Goons picked "highsec pubbies" as their punching bag: because we don't hit back. We have the power, our ISK, but we sit on it, spend it on luxury items (officer items) or just stockpile it. We don't use it for anything meaningful, anything that shapes New Eden. So I stopped stockpiling it and used it to hit back to Goons. And it works with stunning results: for every ISK I pay, Goons and pets suffer 12 ISK damage.

... because they're all interested in killing highsec pubbies who don't hit back.

Again: when Marmite shoots at someone who's heading into Jita, where's the difference? How often have the POCOs you've been attacking shot back? How does RFing a POCO not punish the highsec industrialists using that planet?

How are you not, in fact, far more of a danger to highsec industrial activity than they are right now? They shoot individual ships. You're attacking the infrastructure of industry itself.

Finally, you can use the bounty feature of EVE. That can't be scammed by anyone. If you trust no one, and can't be bothered to build this trust, just put a bounty to Goonswarm Federation and then someone who is fighting Goons will be able to claim it. However this is why it has the lowest efficiency: your money will most likely arrive to a nullsec enemy of the Goons who would fight without it.

Please do! Please please please! We love seeing who can get the highest bounty! Please put bounties on our heads. Put one on mine: Arrendis, in .NSC., of Tactical Narcotics Team. See if you can get me up to 100,000,000,000 before the end of March!

Lemme tell you, that'd be a feather in my cap, no lie.

(I mean, honestly, when the new Bounty system went in, members of the LAWN corp I was in at the time put bounties on our own Alliance. We got to where LAWN had the highest bounty of any Alliance in the game, including TEST and CONDI. Good times, good times.)

The "purge the useless carebears" belief will be replaced by "how to lure these enablers to our ranks".

And here we get to the crux of this whole thing. Everyone knows you've tried to get into CONDI in the past, Gevlon. Everyone knows none of the CFC Alliances would touch you with TEST's ten-foot pole, so to speak. This whole thing isn't about 'Goons hate PvE', it's about 'Goons rejected me' and you're going on a massive vendetta to show you're better than they are, just like you did last year when you were throwing money at TEST, and declaring that TEST could never collapse in exactly the way it did after 6VDT.

I didn't expect you to sink so low to pull the "lol it's a game for fun nothing matters here". Maybe I just have to send you after Lucas. Hint: the above non-argument makes every discussion impossible, as if I go by the same line, I can say "hey, join Lemmings or support it because it's fun and they get MAAAD".

Goons are obnoxious to highsec PvE players (maybe to others too). Highsec players aren't happy about it. Goons laugh on that too and call that "tears". I offer them a way to fight back: join Lemmings if you want to try PvP or simply send money.

The "you run from blobs" is boring. Of course we run from blobs. Everyone does. The Mittani banned DBRB from FCing capitals after he did NOT run from blobs in Asakai.

And yes, when I started playing the game, I saw GSF as a strong EVE PLAYER group where players who are able to contribute can join. It turned out that it's not true, you can't join them, no matter how good you are. They are openly denying meritocracy, they openly claim that "it doesn't matter how good you are in what you do, all that matters is being one of us". I find this idea disgusting and will see to it eradicated.

Because speaking a language is an understandable demand. (You didn't have to BE Finnish, just speak the language).

Also, you had to be really good too. They didn't take EVERY DUMBASS Finnish men like Goons literally do.

The problem with Goonwaffe is that they have no other criteria than SA membership. The problem with CFC is that the same can't be done by the pets. I mean if a group from "SB" forums want to join, they get rejected for not meeting performance criteria that THEY DON'T MEET EITHER.

Plus: Paragon never bothered to grief other players, on the opposite, they published videos and guides useful for learning the game.

Rydis (famous campaign commander) is not in GoonWaffe.Mr. Vee (bloc-level FC) is not in GoonWaffe.Vily (bloc-level FC) is not in GoonWaffe.Lazarus Telraven (bloc level FC) is not in GoonWaffe.Kcolor (FC Team but not sure what exactly his role is, he does most stratop broadcasts) is not in GoonWaffe.Reagalan (US TZ capital FC) is not in GoonWaffe.Fawlty7 (only AU FC) is not in GoonWaffe.shutupandshave (carrier ratter extraordinaire and leader of SV squad) is not in GoonWaffe.Mynas Atoch (supercapital builder and skyteam member) is not in GoonWaffe.

Basically the entirety of GSF's military command structure is not in GoonWaffe and yet you are crying about how unfair it is that you will never be allowed to join that corp.

Nobody but pubbies has been caring about ~true goons~ since 2010 or so. You seriously need to rethink your view of the "inner pets".

"Finally, you can use the bounty feature of EVE. That can't be scammed by anyone. If you trust no one, and can't be bothered to build this trust, just put a bounty to Goonswarm Federation and then someone who is fighting Goons will be able to claim it. However this is why it has the lowest efficiency: your money will most likely arrive to a nullsec enemy of the Goons who would fight without it."I would actually support the bounty system a bit more than this. As you say, it cannot be scammed. It has a secure x5 efficiency. And it will give ISK to someone who shoots or rather has shot a goon. ISK that will make it easier for him to shoot another goon, be he nulsec dweller or not. So it is very well placed. You have - rightly - pointed out several times that ISK wins wars. ISK given via the bounty pool wins wars, too.

I encourage you to keep up the wardec - I think it is a good idea to have a perma-possibility to go shoot the most powerful player group.

The bounty system may be even more efficient than the war declaration, though: it has an unchangeable efficiency rate, it will empower anyone who shot a goon, it will incentivize anyone to go shoot a goon (regardless of lemmings membership), and noone can run away with it. And while you spend 1 ISK and received 12 ISK in damage, there is still the question how many ISK damage would have been done without your ISK - Marmite had an on-and-off-wardec anyway, so your ISK probably caused less than the 12 ISK damage.

The bounty system is also much more easy to use by individuals, and almost anyone can contribute to making a difference: let's say 500 traders each spend 100mil every month (which is very little for any serious trader). That would amount to 50 BIL bounty each month, which would last for 250 BIL in damages.

I do it myself, and I encourage everyone to put 100mil each month on the most powerful player group there is (which atm IMHO happens to be Goonswarm alliance). To keep the game interesting, and to make a difference as a peaceful trader.

I didn't expect you to sink so low to pull the "lol it's a game for fun nothing matters here".

Did I say nothing matters? No, I said that pixels in a spaceship game aren't a measurement of pain and suffering comparable to real world hardship - forestalling precisely that argument before it could be made.

Of course it matters. That's the entire point of Eve, is that what you do, what you have, what you lose matters. But people choosing to play this game can't be coming into it thinking 'nobody's going to blow up my stuff'. The game's advertising, both actual and event-generated PR, revolves around 'Someone blew up my stuff when I didn't want them to.'

That's the game. That's what you're objecting to. And it's what you, yourself, are encouraging by reveling in Marmite's ganks and gate-camps. You're not wrong to do that, and neither are they. But it also follows that neither are Goons.

And yes, you can most certainly say 'join Lemmings and shoot Goons because it's fun and makes them mad'. I wholeheartedly endorse that philosophy - because I'm sure when the guys you catch get ganked, they do get mad, and you've earned those tears. Enjoy them.

Just don't say the Goons are bad, and you're not, when you're doing the same thing they do.

And no, Mittens didn't ban Boat from running caps because he didn't run from a blob. He banned Boat from running caps because he repeatedly did things with caps that he should not have been doing, and lost too many of them.

Hint: Boat's not running Battleships anymore, either. It's not because he 'didn't run from blobs'. As a matter of fact, Boat's encouraged to not run from blobs - he bombs them now, instead.

It turned out that it's not true, you can't join them, no matter how good you are.

Really? Tell that to ENL-I, or any of the other TEST corporations that joined them. Tell that to DingoGS, who's one of our most active FCs. He was in TEST during Fountain, too, I think, no?

Your narrative still has holes in it, most of which still seem to be born of incomplete information, and no small degree of personal resentment over your own rejection. It's not worth this much anger, man. The more you obsess over them, the more they laugh at you, no matter how many idiots you kill in highsec.

@Arrendis: I never objected anyone blowing anything up. I would be quite a hypocrite if I'd blame Goons for ganking. Good players pwning bad ones is common in every game. However everyone else then gives helpful advice how to stop being bad at the game, while Goons purposefully lie: "you died because we are stronger and there is nothing you can do about it". Well, I'm just doing something about it.

Also, most players don't call others "pubbie shitlords" and generally be obnoxious. Yes, they kill your pixels if their interest demand it. But killing them for no other reason then tears is griefing. It's of course a valid gameplay. But rallying people against them is valid too.

ENL-I, Dingo and the rest couldn't join. They could become pets. They are constantly monitored and evaluated. Would they become useless, they'd be purged as many before them. But not the Goons themselves. They are openly useless and can stay.

"Good players pwning bad ones is common in every game. However everyone else then gives helpful advice how to stop being bad at the game,"

So please tell the terribad goons which you ganked in highsec during wartime how to prevent those losses and avdvice :-).

Oh and f.e. burnjita is well communicated before its happening and still the folks are running in it with their freighters.advice was given. Same with your mining ganks. Actually it was more sensible, because we warned them before. :-)

you are not better then goons. you are just making (bad) propaganda. but its all cool and entertaining, so feel free to go ahead. it wont change anything

In my opinion bounties are a waste of isk. Just look at CSM representative Mike Azariah. As a joke the CSM started to encourage people to put bounties on his head. He currently has 8.8 billion in bounties on him.

Can you see an increase in his deaths on kill boards due to this bounty? Skimming zkillboard it looks like he's dying way less now than he used to.

Bounties simply aren't rewarding enough to encourage you to shoot someone. Someone will either be a valid target that you can kill or they wont. They wont ever become a valid target (e.g. worth declaring war on) because of their bounty.

Furthermore because goons fight in Null sec and lose carriers, dreads, supers and titans their bounty pool will drain really quickly to the other null sec folks that they are already fighting. So you are largely transferring wealth from a high sec person to a null sec person (e.g. a member of Pandemic Legion who are amazingly rich already and have collected the second most bounties of anyone in the game after goons) who would be shooting goons anyway rather than from a high sec person to other high sec people who will then be encouraged to shoot goons.

@Anonymous: putting bounty on a pilot is a waste of time. Putting it on a 12K member group isn't. The difference is the possibility of killing one. If you want to kill Joe (because of his bounty), you need to camp Joe while he is sitting on a station which isn't a fun gameplay. On the other hand you can easily find *a* Goon to kill if you camp Jita or go to Deklein.

PL is on the end of a spectrum and - as B-R shown - even they aren't infinitely rich. So giving them money will increase their ability to fight Goons.

Granted, it's the least effective method, that's why I listed bounties as the last resort.

@Nightgerbil: bounty system has been reworked. When you kill a ship or pod, you get a small share of the bounty pool, about 20% of the destroyed value. So if a Goon destroys his own 100M ship, he gets 20M bounty and some insurance too. If a Goon destroys his own worthless pod, he gets nothing.

I just realized something. Marmite used to wardec the goons quite frequently, now you fund this. What happened to the funds that they used to devote to that? They wardec people. Including small highsec industrial corps.

Come to think of it, Marmite has done me more harm, as a trader/industrialist , than the goons! Are you sure you are on the appropriate targets?

You know, I was skeptical about this whole thing, but watching the Goons massively react on your comments and the forums is really telling. If you were wrong or just ineffective, they'd laugh it off. They're calling you a crackpot, but they're not actually treating you like one.

I've been following this for a while and honestly thought it was awesome what you have been doing, but this blog has me thinking twice now. I've been in a few indy corps over the last year and the only group to really pick on helpless newbie pve guys is marmite. If you want to help the PVE players in High Sec you should be stopping them. Ever since you started funding them they have been using their isk to wardec more small industry corps even making a few good ones I know disband. If you stand up for the PVE highsecer then stop he real bully, MARMITE.

@Tavi: I told many times that "industry corps" are not supported by the game mechanics. I'm in the NPC corp for a reason. Being in corp with another industrial player has zero benefit over just having a chat channel. The cost is wardec and awox.

I think you are approaching high sec industry in the wrong manner. In null you have to dock up as soon as a red jumps in system. In high you have 24hrs before reds are a problem. Use this time for diplomacy. I have yet to have a dec last longer than a day.

They are supported, but the risks often outweigh the benefits. Funny thing is, that's because of groups like Marmite who wardec them for cheap and easy kills, not because there's a null group who occasionally come to high sec to do a pre-announced gank.

So this blogpost is only for highsec pve players that are in neutral corps? I'm guessing most pve players are in player corporations, since this is a MMO after all. And for those players, what Goons do sound a lot more fair: They announce ahead of time exactly what they are going to do, and where, and thus makes it easy for an informed player to stay safe. Marmites on the other hand wardec small corps mercilessly, often disbanding them or making their experience miserable for weeks.

How exactly are people helping pve players in highsec by donating to you, when you use it to fund one of the worst highsec wardec groups?

@Arrendis: I never objected anyone blowing anything up. I would be quite a hypocrite if I'd blame Goons for ganking. Good players pwning bad ones is common in every game. However everyone else then gives helpful advice how to stop being bad at the game, while Goons purposefully lie: "you died because we are stronger and there is nothing you can do about it". Well, I'm just doing something about it.

No, that's not at all what Goons say when they're ganking. What they tend to say is 'you died because you were stupid', and stupid takes a lot of forms. Not doing due diligence and letting one of Boat's awoxing alts into your corp? You were stupid. 2 or more CFC members showed up in the system you're mining in, and you didn't at least align to station so you could try to dock up if they appeared in nearby space? (And your highsec mining corp doesn't set standings that let you see when 'the bad guys' show up?) That's stupid. You paid a ridiculous sum of ISK to join CONDI, and it was a scam? You were stupid.

What's more, all of these things, these simple measures to protect themselves, are things the Goons openly advise people to do, be it on the EVE-O forums, TMDC, or elsewhere. Heck, the recruitment page says in bright red letters "If you gave isk to join GoonWaffe then you were scammed and you're shit out of luck." Here, look for yourself. Publicly viewable, and the first hit on Google for 'goonswarm recruitment'.

And you know about EFT, right? And EVEMON? Amazingly useful tools for people trying to figure out how to get better at the game? Made by Goons, and released to everyone.

Goons only say 'there's nothing you can do about it' when they're trolling. Are they uniformly wonderful people who'd give you the shirt off their back? No. But they're not Hitler, either... well, Solo Drakhban is literally Hitler, but that's another issue completely.

Also, most players don't call others "pubbie shitlords" and generally be obnoxious. Yes, they kill your pixels if their interest demand it. But killing them for no other reason then tears is griefing. It's of course a valid gameplay. But rallying people against them is valid too.

Welcome to the Internet, Gevlon, where yes, most people are trolls. Did you never go into Barrens Chat in WoW? Just because most of the people in EVE don't have the level of visibility necessary for their personal obnoxiousness to be on display to one and all certainly doesn't mean they aren't.

Humanity is obnoxious. Each and every one of us. Often. We are fundamentally selfish, brutish, oafish creatures who derive joy from seeing others experience discomfort and embarrassment.

As you've said, it's perfectly valid gameplay. So is trash-talk, which is all it is when the Goons call someone a 'shitlord', or N3 or PL line members refer to PvE players as 'subhumans' (And for the record, I notice you're not raging against that - personally, I find 'subhuman' to be a far more obnoxious term, and it's one the Goons never use unironically.)

You seem to object to being called a 'pubbie'. Why? Are you a member of any uniformed government workforce? If not, do you object to being called a 'civilian'? Are you a New Yorker? If not, do object when we call you all 'tourists'?

ENL-I, Dingo and the rest couldn't join. They could become pets. They are constantly monitored and evaluated. Would they become useless, they'd be purged as many before them. But not the Goons themselves. They are openly useless and can stay.

They most certainly did join CONDI. They are in Goonswarm, with all of the attendent perks and responsibilities. As for whether members of Waffe can be 'openly useless' and stay... you do know Waffe just conducted another of their 'we finished another war, who was fucking useless?' purges when we came back northwest, right?

@Tavi: I told many times that "industry corps" are not supported by the game mechanics. I'm in the NPC corp for a reason. Being in corp with another industrial player has zero benefit over just having a chat channel. The cost is wardec and awox.

Right, because the ability to pool resources reliably and easily via Corporate Hangars and the Corp Wallet, that's not a benefit for a small group of miners that's working on getting an orca, for example.

Or wanting to set up a POS for research slots because all the ones in the stations are almost permanently occupied. (Need those corp standings high enough.)

Or any of the dozens of things industrial corps actually do together beyond just sitting waiting to be ganked.

If you're playing solo, then staying in an NPC corp is fine. If you're not at all discriminating about who you associate with, staying in an NPC corp is almost necessary. If you're playing with a consistent group of friends, especially people you know from outside EVE... then no, the NPC corp is definitely not the way to go.

Just don't open your corp up to people you don't know. If you want to be able to recruit, come up with a vetting process that doesn't expose the assets of your regular joe pilot to risk. Something like, I dunno, only recruit people you know outside of the game first. Maybe people you work with. Maybe people you get to know first through hobbies.

Maybe get to know them first on an internet forum where being stupid and useless gets called out for what it is? I know most of the core group I fly with started off that way in WoW, raiding with Leftovers in Vanilla (and in some cases, running the org as we grew to a few thousand raiders in late BC/LK - not sustainable in the face of the changes Blizz made to raiding, alas).

Of course, doing things like that might seem exclusionary and a denial of meritocracy, but you know... someone who's not willing to jump through minimal hoops is already showing themselves as more in it for themselves than willing to actually commit for the group. :/

@Babar: yes Marmite might wardec Joe Jim and Jack who mine in a corp and dream of one day affording an Orca. But they are unlikely be able to donate anyway.

I'm thinking about those who make the "EVE production graph" big in highsec. I made lot of ISK in highsec and never had any trouble with Marmite.

@Arrendis: no. Competition and selfishness aren't obnoxious. Ruthless sometimes, as zero sum games mean one wins, other loses. But you have the option of being the winner, or simply stepping aside. A selfish one won't go out of his way to harm you. An obnoxious does. Most people aren't obnoxious. Not even in EVE. PL, Nulli, Solar aren't obnoxious. Sure, they'd take my Sov if I had any. Or loot my wreck if I'd jump into their fleet. But they don't go out of their way to gank a newbie's Venture for lols.

Do you not see the extreme hypocrisy in saying "Also, to cover up their PvE nature, Goons are extremely obnoxious towards other PvE players. While other alliances just ignore and dismiss PvE as playstyle, Goons go great length to hurt such players for little personal gain." when you fund an alliance they does orders of magnitude more damage to highsec pve players? And even if you don't, do you see why so many say this has nothing to do with highsec or pve, but rather your personal issue with GSF? I mean, you joined TEST twice, and they participated in the exact same things, they recruitment scammed, Dreddit was just as much outside the rules in TEST as you claim Goonwaffe is in GSF.

You're trying to address all highsec pve players here, but what you really mean is "Highsec traders in neutral corps". And somehow it's ok for Marmite to wardec a small defenseless pve corp, because they wouldn't pay for them anyway. There's no logic here, other than you trying to hurt CFC and trying to create a narrative around it, which is falling apart around you.

@Arrendis, Babar: EVE is a PvP game. Strong looting the weak is normal. Go to a Counterstrike match and cry about being shot at!

I don't hate Goons for evicting TEST from Fountain, despite I was there. I don't hate Goons for B-R. I don't hate them for OTEC. I don't hate them for shooting a 2B+ freighter for its loot. That's playing the game.

If you have something and foolishly leave it undefended, you had it coming. Marmite just does what it has to do with those who simply can't understand "DON'T DO HIGHSEC PVE IN A PLAYER CORP (except 1-man corp)".

Yet you chose to join (and fund) TEST twice, despite Dreddit doing the exact same thing in TEST. And you're trying to appeal to highsec players to fund a war against CFC, but you readily admit here (in the comment section, which far fewer people read I'm sure) that you don't care about highsec players at all, you just want money to keep the war going.

This is what I mean by extreme hypocrisy. Why should anyone gather under your banner when you say one thing, but do the complete opposite?

I don't understand why you say the first one is unfair. It is, in effect, merely the first step in the vetting process: 'Demonstrate to us that you are not going to be an unwanted presence on our Alliance forums.'

Anyone can join SA. Yes, it takes time to accumulate a good posting history, but how is that different from the way PvP-centric groups focus on killboards? Those take time, too.

You say it's anti-meritocracy, but they see it as one of the criteria - first, make the commitment to show you fit in with us. Meritocracy's about advancement based on achievement and contribution. What you are decrying is merely the minimal level of achievement they require. Just because it happens outside of the EVE UI doesn't mean it's invalid, or not available to anyone willing to actually do it.

Why is that so abhorrent to you?

As for the second... there are hundreds of new player guides out there, some written by goons. They've made their internal tools available to the general playerbase: EFT, EVEMon, GTS, all to help people get more out of the game and improve their gameplay.

They're vocal on the EVE-O forums with frank, honest evaluations of game mechanics and changes. For that, they get mocked and told they're clearly only advocating things that benefit themselves - despite a track history of exactly the opposite. Who pushed hard for changes to the top-down, moon-goo-is-all structure that flooded the CFC's coffers w/OTEC money? Goons. Goons have been advocating bottom-up Alliance finance mechanics for years. Openly. Publicly. PVE-centric stuff. 'Farms & Fields', as we call it in the CFC.

Drone Assist being a horribly broken mechanic that makes the game too easy and simultaneously no fun on a large scale - who was it saying 'this is stupid, it should change, and we'll go ahead and demonstrate how absolutely dumb it is by abusing it'? Goons.

Do they hold an individual player's hand and walk them through being better at every aspect of the game? No, of course they... well...

... actually, if you're in the CFC, and you have access to the Goons' wiki, and jabber channels like gs_isk and others, yeah, they do. Happily. Gleefully. During fleets, 'hey, that guy in the slasher has been playing Eve for two weeks. I don't need to tell you guys what to do' means 'shower that newbie with money so he never wants for anything again'.

Do they do that for everyone? No, of course not. Do they instruct their victims? If you're new, they probably will. Most Goon gankers don't go ganking Ventures, you know. They ignore Retreivers, in favor of Mackinaws.

Newbies are the lifeblood of EVE. Newbies should be showered in ISK and given all the help they could want. People who've been playing long enough to be in an Exhumer? They shouldn't need to have things explained - and if they do, it's because they've made no effort to understand the mechanics, or the risks.

It's one of the reasons we've been so keen on BNI, and we're very interested in seeing what happens w/them in HERO. They're a baller little group that seems eager to learn, and eager to do... and hopefully, they can give TEST a kick in the pants and get them back to not being utter crap.

I have stayed out of this dialogue, well all of them, for sometime now. Trying very hard to be a good girl, it is so difficult sometimes. Your reasoning for hating Goons actually peaked my interest.

1. Unfair favoritism of SA members, I am still unclear why this is a thing. I have an SA account, the only special treatment I think that gets me is a seat in Goonwaffe if I were to leave my real family in RvB. You have yet to prove how the pure blood are better than anyone else. Some of the biggest names coming from the CFC (Villy, Laz, Vee) aren't in Goonwaffe, they earned their honor the same way as most do in Corporations -- big and small -- by proving themselves. I honestly haven't had any silver platters with pretty things handed to me because I was favored more than anyone else (ok maybe I'm a little bad on the side, and it got distracting).

2. Obnoxious treatment instead of helpful information towards defeated players. This is a PvP game, you are talking about pilots (I am assuming) who did something stupid and got their ass handed to them. Yes they will get trolled -- but isn't that similar to what you do with your comedy kill links on your blog? I think the fact that there are guides, programs, articles and a crapton of posts on forums, blogs and websites -- written by goons, -- shows that there is helpful information being provided.

Honestly you cannot expect goons to curl up next to you every night and read to you about how to align when you land in the asteroid belt, or how to set standings, or how the latest scam really worked. Do your homework, play smart, have fun. And if there are any goons available to tell bedtime stories, look me up, sometimes I have difficulty going to sleep

You claim again and again that it is unfair that goons play favorites with SA members. Despite the fact that there is proof to the contrary, and that all members of GSF and to some extent CFC are treated as well as Goonwaffe members. But lets ignore that for a second and concentrate on your "play favorites with SA members".

You can become a goon. Pay for membership to the SA forums and become a regular poster. There are actually some pretty high brow conversations over there. And a collection of very very intelligent people that you might actually enjoy conversing with.

So pay the membership and join them. Don't MOAN about meritocracy. Meritocracy isn't the only thing that works you know. People in the real world get things that they didn't earn all the time. This is the real world, time to grow up.

@Babar: TEST had no unfair favoritism towards Dreddit which is the point. NO ONE had any performance measurements. On the other hand in GSF everyone has - except Goonwaffe members.

@Arrendis: asking for an irrelevant outside "performance" is what various favoritism does to cover favoritism.

@LR: I do not approve the idea of no highsec corps and suggested several times to CCP to allow creation of no-dec, no-awox corps at the cost of paying the NPC tax. They ignored. Until they did, it's a bad idea, hands down.

@TO ALL: actually this discussion is stupid. It doesn't matter why I hate Goons. It doesn't matter if the things people hate Goons for are objectively true or not.

What matters is that most highsec players hate Goons like the leper. And because of that they join any somewhat successful anti-Goon movement.

C.F.A scam? In EVE? No freaking way! If scamming a complete moron is what's wrong with goons then the same thing is wrong with most of the EVE playerbase. Even Gevlon himself talks about exploiting M&S for his own gain.

I can't help but feel that if anyone else had done this, you'd have no issue with it at all.

It's not the scam, it's using the official Goon news site to harvest information about the victim and then using the official Goon news site to crow about the success of the scam.

And then using the comments on the official Goon news web site to post details about the real life person they just scammed. And then discuss in the comments contacting the person's real-life wife about his hobby.

So...yes, everything that's wrong with the Goons in a nutshell. It's not just ruining someone in the game using legitimate game practices, it's making that person's life as horrible as possible inside and outside the game.

C.F.You came up with the idea that they use the site to harvest info, that's not confirmed fact. They could just have easily seen the kill on zkb and gone after him, they may have done both the article and the scam, but that doesn't mean someone submitted it then they used that info.

The comments are free for everyone to use, so again no confirmation that was goons. And the real life thing the "victim" himself brought up, by threatening people with his lawyer powers. The this is if test had done this, which they've done in the past, there would be no complaints. You hate goons so everything goons do you hate and you will find a reason to hate it no matter how hypocritical.

I don't hate the Goons. I used to read Something Awful all the time. While I was disturbed by their fascination with Hentai games that feature "college" girls, most of their stuff was pretty funny. But they like to push boundaries too far, they always have. It's their nature.